Page 26 of Rival Hearts

I giggled. “Your problems areimpossible.”

“Shut up,” Maya said, but she laughed. “The point I was trying to make, before you decided to psychoanalyze me, was that one of the owners of a mega yacht company is rumored to show face here sometime today. You know, to do a press release of his own.”

“He wants to piggyback off the publicity I’m generating?” I cried out.

Maya shook her head. “I don’t think that’s what it is.”

“The hell it’s not!Wedid all the work putting this thing together, and it’sourhard work that’s getting all the people here. Now he’s just swooping in to use the press and make it about himself?”

“It’s not a big deal. The more press we get, the better, right?”

I shook my head. “It’s going to be like David and Goliath.”

“Did David win that? All hail the underdogs, right?”

She was right. That had been a bad analogy. I was just being negative. The sun was hot, that article still bothered me, and I didn’t know if my attempts to make a difference would really do that. I wanted to make a difference. I was determined. I just wasn’t always sure of myself.

My dad had been a giant like that, someone who’d had the ability to make a difference. The money, too. He’d just chosen himself and getting more money rather than making a difference.

These people were all the same—in a world where money ruled, nothing else mattered.

A ripple passed through the crowd of onlookers and reporters, and a sleek black car pulled up in the beach parking lot. Thereporters flocked together around whoever stepped out so that I couldn’t even see the guy, and lights flashed. The reporters chirped and squawked like seagulls, each trying their best to be heard, to have their question answered first.

“Can you believe it?” I grumbled. “Having that much clout that everyone wets themselves when you get closer and not using it for the greater good?”

“Maybe it’s something we can sway, get them on our side.”

I snorted. “If it was that easy, we wouldn’t be campaigning at all. I’m going up there.”

“What for?”

I dropped my bag and picker and marched through the crew on the beach toward the steps that led to the parking lot.

I was going to give Mr. Whoever-He-Was a piece of my mind about using my hard work to draw a crowd for his own personal gain.

“Rest assured that we’re doing what we can to ensure that our ocean life isn’t affected by the way we do business,” a voice said. It sounded achingly familiar. “That will be all for now.”

A burly-looking man shooed the reporters away from this guy.

Seriously? He’d come to the beach with a bodyguard.

He turned away from the crowd, and his eyes fell on me.

I froze.

My blood rushed in my ears.

My stomach twisted in a way that made me feel sick and made me giddy at the same time.

Alex Blackwood.

His eyes locked on mine. They were the same piercing eyes I’d fallen into at that boho pub last weekend.

The same square jaw, with his neat short beard.

The same upright posture.

I knew what it felt like to run my hands over those pecs of steel. I knew what his lips felt like on mine.